What is the value of having an HTML sitemap on site?
-
For years now whenever we recreate a site we always set up both an xml sitemap and an html sitemap page.
Stupid question maybe - but what is the value to having an html sitemap on site?
-
I've asked the same thing in the past and told by authoritative users in this forum the following: "If your site is structurally sound, you shouldn't need a sitemap."
I've bought into that principle.
If customers scroll to the bottom of my pages without finding or keyword searching what they need, I've probably not done a good job of setting it up.
Put into practice, we're in the process of revamping to a top navigation with search suggest features and left nav filtering functionality.
-
I tend to think a sitemap has plenty of value for some sites.
1. It is a useful tool for users to navigate your site or get a high level view of the content
2. It is a useful page for search engine spiders to crawl the site with every (or most) pages only a link away (and the sitemap is often linked from every page as well albeit in a footer link).
Obviously, search engines only crawl a given amount of links on a page so take that into consideration and break your site map up into chunks of 100 links or so - no hard and fast rules here as it's going to be different for amazon than for a small one man band operating in a small town or city but 100 links is a good starting point.
You could always review the analytics - do people use this page? Does it get crawled? Is it a useful link to drop into given posts and pages to aid users in their navigation of the site?
It's almost like a sitemap is the big board that you see in the shopping mall with all the floors, areas and shops on. In many cases it is a useful navigational tool for users with some search engines benefits so what's not to like?
There are no concrete answers here but think about your users and if this could benefit them then it is nearly always a good thing and if it kicks back some search benefits as well then all the better.
Hope that helps
Marcus
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Image Sitemap
I currently use a program to create our sitemap (xml). It doesn't offer creating an mage sitemaps. Can someone suggest a program that would create an image sitemap? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Sitemap Size effect SEO
So I've noticed that the sitemap I use has a capacity of 4500 URLs, but my website is much larger. Is it worth paying for a commercial sitemap that encompasses my entire site? I also notice that of the 4500 URLs which have been submitted, only 104 are indexed. Is this normal, if not, why is the index rate so low?
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Sitemap issue
How can I create XML as well as HTML sitemaps for my website (both eCommerce and non - eCommerce )Is there any script or tool that helps me making perfect sitemapPlease suggest
Technical SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Site not indexed after 1 month
Hi people, I have been working on this new website for a month now and it has still not been indexed, here is a link: http://bit.ly/HNgzKG Can any of you spot anything wrong with it? I have tried submitting and also submitted an xml sitemap but still no joy.
Technical SEO | | Eavesy0 -
GWT and html improvements
Hi all I am dealing with duplicate content issues on webmaster tool but I still don't understand what's happening as the number of issues keeps changing. Last week the duplicate meta description were 232, then went down to 170 now they are back to 218. Same story for duplicate meta title, 110, then 70 now 114. These ups and downs have been going on for a while and in the past two weeks I stopped changing things to see what would have happened. Also the issues reported on GWT are different from the ones shown in the Crawl Diagnostic on Moz. Furthermore, most URL's have been changed (more than a year ago) and 301 redirects have been implemented but Google doesn't seem to recognize them. Could anyone help me with this? Also can you suggest a tool to check redirects? Cheers Oscar
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Site is not displaying in Search Engines
My site is www.deoveritas.com it is in magento framework and it has a blog section in wordpress. When I enter Site:www.deoveroitas.com in google it shows all blog links in search result. The homepage and other innerpages are not getting displayed in search results at all. I even tried searching for www.deoveritas.com/about-us and it displays blogs in result. Checked Google webmaster fetch as google and it was index and successful. Can you please help me with this. Is my site de-indexed or banned by Google? the same issue is on Bing and Yahoo search engines too. Please help Thank you.
Technical SEO | | tpt.com0 -
Can you have a /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.html on the same site?
Thanks in advance for any responses; we really appreciate the expertise of the SEOmoz community! My question: Since the file extensions are different, can a site have both a /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.html both siting at the root domain? For example, we've already put the html sitemap in place here: https://www.pioneermilitaryloans.com/sitemap Now, we're considering adding an XML sitemap. I know standard practice is to load it at the root (www.example.com/sitemap.xml), but am wondering if this will cause conflicts. I've been unable to find this topic addressed anywhere, or any real-life examples of sites currently doing this. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | PioneerServices0 -
Impact of Adding a Mobile Site
Hi, we ranked very well for keywords trophies and trophies and awards on our home page, trophycentral.com for quite a while (many years). Recently we dropped off the charts, but are not sure why. So we posted this issue last week and got some great suggestions and are in the process of addressing them. However, we are now wondering if we caused this issue when we launched our mobile site a few months ago (timing makes sense). Has anyone had trouble with a mobile site impacting their traditional site? I am wondering if maybe google is splitting the traffic to the trophycentral domain and the m.trophycentral.com domain? Here is the code we have< script type="text/javascript" src="http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/sportsawards/mobile-redirection.js">script>Appreciate your comments!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0